


just take an angel by the wings (beg her now for one more day)

by starraya



Category: Holby City
Genre: Bernie didn't break the door down in time, F/F, Serena was up on the roof to commit suicide like everyone thought, Sexual Content, TW: Suicide, TW: implied self-harm, self-destructive behaviour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 21:24:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11471958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starraya/pseuds/starraya
Summary: Within the hazy, liminal space of drifting off Bernie feels Serena’s lips briefly at the top of her back, feels her arm wind around her waist.“Don’t you leave me again,” Serena mumbles, teasing and tremulous, against Bernie’s skin.I won’t, Bernie thinks. But the promise – as if spoken underwater – doesn’t form into sound.She is asleep.





	just take an angel by the wings (beg her now for one more day)

After Elinor's funeral, Bernie likes it best when they are sleeping. When there are no words between her and Serena – loving or otherwise. When they cannot see the sadness in each other’s eyes. They can just lie in bed, sometimes entangled in each other, sometimes apart. Always, though, side by side.

They can just pretend everything is okay. They can wrap the night around them like a blanket and slip their heads underneath. They scrunch up their eyes and find darkness. They open their eyes and find the same darkness. Reality is kind to them in the midnight hours.

-

Bernie can feel herself slipping into sleep. Who knew happiness could be so exhausting? Although she thinks the flight back from Kiev, her first day back at Holby and the highly-strung mess of emotion encircling her and Serena might have contributed. Bernie thinks they are unpicking it, little by little. Not with words – they haven’t talked much since Serena kissed her in their office and Bernie’s mind went blank as the night sky, each touch of Serena’s emblazoning a star across it – but with the press of lips and trail of fingertips.

They will be okay. They need to talk more, but – as Bernie lies next to Serena, her body still thrumming and her limbs deliciously languid and loose – “Are you sure you’ve never done this before?” “I’m a quick learner.” – she thinks they will be okay. More than okay, she thinks, feeling Serena’s body curl up against the back of her. Within the hazy, liminal space of drifting off Bernie feels Serena’s lips briefly on her shoulder, feels her arm wind around her waist more insistently. (Like a permeant fixture. Bernie hopes it is.)

“Don’t you leave me again,” Serena mumbles, teasing and tremulous, against Bernie’s skin.

Bernie doesn’t know for certain if Serena said it or if it was her mind.

I won’t, Bernie thinks. But the promise – as if spoken underwater – doesn’t form into sound.

She is asleep.

-

_Seven months later_

Maybe this was a bad idea, Bernie thinks, returning. Maybe she should have never come back – not even to clear through her things, the photo-frames, the potted plant, the wine bottles. But she walks into AAU, eyes lined and smudged grey from sleepless nights and heads straight for their office.

When she is flicking aimlessly – not taking in the words, not even reading – the third piece of paperwork, she looks across the desk.

“Hi," Bernie says, finding familiar, warm brown eyes on her for the first time in weeks.

“Hi, yourself.”

“I . . .” Bernie stumbles for an explanation – her creased shirt (she hasn’t ironed in weeks), her hair (washed, but twisted back into a knot and rapidly spilling out), or her breath (tell-tale smoke from cigarette after cigarette).

But Serena just smiles at her softly. “I know.”

For the rest of the hour, Bernie stays sorting through paperwork. Occasionally, she pauses to look up again, to check that she is still here. She is. At the end of the hour, Bernie finds Hanssen. Tells him that she’s ready, she wants to come back.

-

The second time they don’t talk at all. It isn’t needed. Sometimes it never is, in surgery. Bernie delicately reconstructs the leg of a young man and her hands never lose their steady confidence.

She can do this.

She looks at Serena opposite her.

They can do this.

She saves the leg. The surgery is a success. But as she pulls off her mask, scrubs at her hands until they’re raw, something grips her throat – hot and painful. She chokes back a sob. Blinks back tears.

Only later, in Albies when she can’t taste the whiskey on her tongue or hear her colleagues’ voices (quiet and soft – no one tells jokes around her anymore, no one dares laugh), she realises. It’s the first time she’s cried since that night.

-

All does she now is work. Hardly sleeps. Barely eats. Struggles, even, with her morning run now.

But Serena doesn’t mention it – the sharpness of Bernie’s cheekbones or the empty fag packets in her coat pockets.

She just sits with her outside on the stairway and sips coffee with her. Bernie leans in – nestles her head in the crook of Serena’s shoulder – and closes her eyes at Serena’s fingers stroke through Bernie’s hair. Bernie listens to Serena talk about the perforated ulcer in a patient’s abdomen.  

Bernie thinks she might be going insane. Thinks she doesn’t care.

-

“You never showed me these before,” Bernie turns over the next page of the photo album. Honks out laughter at a photo of Serena with a perm.

“Is it any wonder?” Serena asks.

Bernie traces fingertips over a twenty-something Serena. “You look adorable.”

“Hmmm . . . that doesn’t sound quite like a compliment.”

“It’s not,” Bernie replies, earning her the dig of an elbow in her ribs. “This, though,” Bernie turns back to the front of the album, a photo of rows of school girls, Serena in the middle, face serious, arms crossed, tartan skirt ironed within an inch of its life and Head Girl badge shining on her blazer, “this, is still my favourite.”

“Have a thing for uniform, do you?”

“Now, dear,” Bernie wigs wine from a glass in hand. “I rather think that was you.”

 _Was._ Bernie sets down her glass and shuts the album. Slots it amongst the others in a cardboard box and closes the top. She leaves Serena’s bedroom – the mess of clothes and jewellery, books and albums and CDs, a fair few records – and heads to the kitchen.

It all needs sorting through, finally, but Bernie promises herself another day. Another day where she doesn’t have to find out how much of Serena she never got to know.

She rummages for a Chinese takeaway leaflet.

“It’s not doing you any good, you know?” Serena’s voice floods the room.

Bernie shrugs her shoulders. “I’m hungry.”

“You need to stop eating like a Uni student who’s just left home.”

“Nothing else in.” Bernie searches for her mobile. (She’s misplaced it again, misplaces things a lot these days.)

“I’m sure there’s something.” Serena searches the half-empty cupboards.

“Fine, fine,” Bernie relents, not sure which she finds more irritating – the little clink of the cupboards opening and closing or Serena’s nagging. “I’ll cook.”

She’s stirring pasta when Serena interrupts again. “You need to go shopping. There’s Cameron’s present to buy as well. When it is? Next Wednesday? Are you going to meet up? Didn’t Marcus –”

Bernie switches off the hob. “Why?” She snaps. “Why Serena?” She grabs the pot of Pasta and drains it in the sink. Hisses as the hot water spills over her skin. Grits her teeth as she pours the pasta in the bowl, before chucking the pot into the sink with a resounding clang. “Why couldn’t you have just talked to me?”

Bernie turns on the tap. Holds her burnt hand under. Closes her eyes at the sting.

“I would have done anything for you. Anything to help you.” A tear slips down her cheek. “We could have found you help, proper help. I should never have let you come back to work so soon. I should have stayed with you. We could have moved. Left the city. Left the country, if you wanted. We could have . . . “ Sobs rack Bernie’s body. She feels Serena come up behind her, feels her body press against her and her hands curl around Bernie’s waist, enveloping her.  

“I love you.”

Bernie doesn’t know who says it. She doesn’t know if the words tear their way out of her throat or drift from Serena’s lips, but she slides out of Serena’s embrace. Turns to her.

“Please,” her voice shakes as tears course down her face. “Please, just go.”

And Serena does.

-

Bernie throws the pasta in the bin. It will be easier on an empty stomach. 

She throws on new clothes, even a bit of make-up. Finds a club and finds a pretty girl. Petite, red-haired, thirty-odd. After countless drinks, she takes Bernie’s hand and leads her to the toilets. Bernie lets her. Let’s the woman tug at her clothes, fumble with the belt of Bernie’s trousers, push her hand underneath. Bernie kisses the woman back, tugs at her dress, claws at the straps. Nothing about it is gentle.

Nothing but the way Serena’s name falls from Bernie’s lips as the red-head scrapes her teeth across Bernie’s collarbone and twists three fingers inside her.

-

Bernie sinks to the shower floor. Pulls her knees up to her chest. Too numb to even hate herself. She picks at the burn on her hand, rakes nails over the tender flesh. Wonders if she’s lost Serena for good.

-

Two streets away from Marcus’s house, Bernie pulls up at the side of the road. She needs a minute. More than a minute. She isn’t sure she can do this.

“You can.”

Bernie jolts at Serena’s voice. Doesn’t need to reach for the rear-view mirror and peer into it to see Serena in the backseat, behind her, but does anyway.

“You’re wrong,” Bernie tells her.

“A rare occurrence that is not happening now,” Serena counters, voice and features softening. “It’ll be alright.”

“They’ll hate me for it.”

“They’ll understand. Besides you don’t have to tell them yet. Wait until the birthday’s over.”

“I can’t do that either.” She can’t go in there and play happy families. She doesn’t even think she can force the smile to greet her son and wish him Happy Birthday.

“No one expects anything of you. Cam just wants you there. He hasn’t seen you in ages. And you never know, you might even enjoy it.”

That’s the last the thing Bernie wants. But she knows Serena’s right. She can’t run from this. She needs to say goodbye to her family before she leaves.

“Come with me,” Bernie asks Serena. “To the door?”

“Sure.”

-

Reality is kind to Bernie in the midnight hours. She opens her eyes and finds darkness. She scrunches up her eyes and finds the same darkness. She can wrap the night around her like a blanket and slip her head underneath. She can just pretend everything is okay. Maybe it is.

She’s getting better, she thinks. Of course, she must eat better now, she must train and look after her body again. She’s even sleeping through most nights. Blocking out the noise of enemy gunfire in her ears. Blocking out the number of how many men she’s lost. Blocking out other things.

The memory of Serena only joins her at night now. 

Bernie lies in her bunk and feels another’s arms wrap around her – like a bandage for a broken body. Serena holds her together, soothes her with words until Bernie falls asleep with a smile on her lips.

She likes it best when they are sleeping.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from 'Angel by the Wings' by Sia.


End file.
